IETF funding needs (Was: Re: IETF Endowment update)

[Jari Arkko <[e-mail]>]

John,

I won’t answer on ISOC’s behalf, but I wanted to provide
a data point regarding your question about the IETF and
funding in general:

> At
> least some of us think we have seen a corrosive effect of
> readily-available funding or reserves on several
> Internet-related institutions, particular with regard to
> encouraging expansion beyond core roles and various sorts of
> adventurism.

I agree...

> While I understand it will make the jobs they
> signed up for a bit harder, I think anything that forces the
> IAOC and IESG to carefully consider the risks and possible
> consequences of various strategies and to share those
> considerations with the community is A Good Thing.  I can't help
> but believe that, if faced with, for example, an "if we go to
> that place, a lot of people might not come" possibility, there
> would be more actual consultation with the community, including
> exposure of the risks and alternatives, than when there is
> confidence that ISOC or the IETF Endowment would bail things out
> with no long-term ill effects.

I get your point, though I think that leadership is more concerned
about community feeling things are going right than finance. That
doesn’t mean we always get things right of course, at least on
first try, see case #100.

However, I really need to make a point about practical finances
of the IETF. The concept of feeling safe from any risk seems
foreign to me. We are on a constant mission to find enough
support every year to cover our costs. From for instance meeting
hosts. And you all, a big chunk of our operations are funded
by the meeting fees. And it was just a couple of days ago when
I had a discussion with several IETFers about the effect of
our meeting fees on, say, our academic or open source
participant’s ability to attend. *We* all fund the IETF. If
that money flow ever changes direction I feel that the
comparison to some other situations would be more
appropriate, but now it is not.

So — I do welcome funding, for it allows us to run our
normal things like the RFC Editor service — as even the
normal things require funding every year — or help turn on
services that make virtual collaboration easier. And so
on. And I’m very grateful to all of our sponsors, you,
ISOC, and now the endowment, but we’re just getting
by — and that’s probably as it should be.

(This is not to say there shouldn’t be any evolution in
our funding models, e.g., see what I wrote about moving
more to non-meeting-related sponsorship models in
https://www.ietf.org/blog/2016/06/long-term-ietf-evolution/)

Jari